The Dark Gate -- Pamela Palmer

Recently I’ve read several more novels in the Silhouette Nocturne line, since Livia’s doing a book for them, and Pamela Palmer’s THE DARK GATE is the best one I’ve come across so far.

Washington D.C. homicide detective Jack Hallihan is on the trail of a serial rapist who has started murdering his victims. He has another problem to deal with, too – ever since he was a child he’s heard voices babbling inside his head, the same bizarre malady that drove his father to alcoholism and then suicide. Beautiful defense attorney Larsen Vale gets mixed up in Jack’s investigation, and she has a secret, too. She has psychic visions of other people’s deaths, and a sinister, other-worldly albino has started cropping up in those visions. It soon becomes apparent that the albino is responsible for the rapes and murders Jack is investigating. Then there are the two weird little characters running around Washington shooting people with arrows, and the audience at the Kennedy Center that’s turned into a rampaging horde by mass hypnosis, and the entire Washington police force falling under the sorcerous thrall of a villain from an alternate universe . . .

This is an enthusiastic blending of a “cops vs. serial killer” suspense novel with urban fantasy, and as a result it reads sort of like the bastard child of James Patterson and Mercedes Lackey, with a little Norvell Page thrown in for good measure. There are gunfights galore and several hot sex scenes, and even though this is Palmer’s first novel, it’s written in smooth, fast-paced prose that really gallops along. I had a few minor issues with it, such as the fact that the stubborn reluctance by the hero and heroine to open up to each other about their psychic manifestations seems more like a plot convenience than a realistic development, but overall THE DARK GATE is one of the more entertaining novels I’ve read in any genre lately, and I’m glad it’s set up for a sequel. Good stuff, and well worth reading.